The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira

Начало книги

One day at dawn, Dr. Aira found himself walking down a tree-lined street in a Buenos Aires neighborhood. He suffered from a type of somnambulism, and it wasn’t all that unusual for him to wake up on unknown streets, which he actually knew quite well because all of them were the same. His life was that of a half-distracted, half-attentive walker (half absent, half present) who by means of such alternations created his own continuity, that is to say, his style, or in other words and to close the circle, his life; and so it would be until his life reached its end — when he died. As he was approaching fifty, that endpoint, coming sooner or later, could occur at any moment.

A beautiful Lebanese cedar along the verge of a pretentious little street lifted its proud rounded crown into the pinkish-gray air. He stopped to contemplate it, overwhelmed with admiration and affection. He addressed it in pectore with a short speech that combined eulogy, devotion (a request for protection), and, oddly enough, a few descriptive features; for he had noticed that after a time, devotion tended to become somewhat abstract and automatic. In this case, he noticed that the crown of the tree was both barren and leafy; the sky could be seen through it, yet it had foliage. Standing on his tiptoes to look more closely at the lower branches (he was very nearsighted), he saw that the leaves, which were like small, olive-green feathers, were partially coiled around each other, it was the end of fall, and the trees were struggling to survive.

Читать дальше →